Its only 7:15 a.m.

and already I'm irked.

And, yes, that error in the subject line is deliberate.

A local newsfeed had a post about a new trauma center. It posed the question, and I quote: "Who in the community do you think should be advising U. of C. on it's hospital?"

But wait, there's more! (Apologies to Ron Popeil.)

A commentator in this morning's paper complained about our state's license plates. (Yes, this is apparently the most pressing issue facing our state, a state that hasn't had a budget in two years. But I digress.) His column was in the form of an open letter to our secretary of state. He said, "As the longest-serving secretary of state in Illinois history and the man in charge of vehicle registrations, I implore you . . ." I could not help it. I left a snide comment.

I wonder what the rest of the day holds, "grammar-wise"?

Ouch!

To cheer you up, two short excerpts from an eminently respectable book. Both cases where you know what the writer meant, but the other possible way to read it is so much more interesting. (In the second case it's Eric Gill's household we're talking about, so someone marrying his own daughter would almost be conceivable.)

(i) "(the Coles had a maid called Ethel but not all the time)"

(ii) "After he met Gill he had gone to live at Piggotts, married his daughter Joanna and become a full-time printer..."

Oh, dear.

I wonder what they called the maid the rest of the time?

>3 lilithcat: And does she answer?

And how did the daughter feel about being married to her father?

>1 lilithcat: I understand about state priorities. I live in North Carolina. Here we worry about bathrooms while teachers are not being paid decent salaries. We lose millions in revenue from organizations protesting (justifiably) the new bathroom law by taking their business to other states AND our tax dollars are spent fighting the federal government about the aformentioned bathrooms.

I'm always wondering if these people demand separate bathrooms when they visit friends.

>6 JerryMmm:
This isn't the group for that discussion. But we could have a nice time exploring why these controversial bathrooms so often don't have any actual baths in them.

I read today about people feeding 'birds of pray'.

>8 MarthaJeanne: praying they don't get fed on, I guess

>7 thorold: Does anyone go to a restroom for a rest?

There was an article in the local paper a couple of days ago, and the headline read: "ARod to severe ties with Yankees".

>11 jhicks62: Baseball has become such a serious sport. Severe Ties... Wonder what they'll look like

>8 MarthaJeanne: Must be those Apostlebirds!

I'm close to giving up on the misuse of "beg the question". Drives me nuts!

I'm reading First Women, and the author constantly quotes various first women as saying '_____ and I' where it should be '_____ and me'. Arrrgh! You would not say 'for I' so don't write 'for ____ and I'. Don't publishers have people who know English to read the books any more?

>15 MarthaJeanne: >16 Collectorator:
If that was what they actually said in a direct quotation, the author and publisher shouldn't silently "improve" it. The fact that they make that kind of error tells the reader something interesting about their personalities. In informal English it's very natural to use "me" when you have a first person pronoun that isn't at the beginning of a sentence, even where grammatically we would expect "I". (As in "It's me".) Someone who does it the other way round, using "I" where we would expect "me" grammatically, has obviously been taught about that common "error" and is being extra careful not to make it. Which would fit perfectly with the idea of a not very well educated person trying to live up to the role of First Lady.

More interesting: why did the publisher choose the title "First Women"? That phrase would normally suggest either Eve or "the first woman to do X", it doesn't have any link to the role of president's consort. Typically you use "woman" instead of "lady" if you're trying to avoid implicitly sexist conventional courtesy, but that's silly when "Lady" is part of an official title, and even sillier when you go on to use an obviously sexist word like "grace" in the subtitle. Maybe they came up with the subtitle first, then realised that they couldn't very well repeat the phrase "First Ladies".

As a reader you have to make a judgement call when reading reported quotations. Is this a true direct quote, i.e. the author has access to and uses a recording to make sure the wording is correct? Or is this a case of her remembering a conversation? Or is she creating a quotation as a way of trying to bring her writing to life?

In this case, I think we are seeing the third case, possibly the second. I've sent the book back, because I found the whole thing to be much more on the level of gossip columns than of serious biography. If this were really the first case, I would expect something indicating that. Not just a few words including the mistake without comment on it. To the extent that this is really a quotation of something that was really said, I think the author has 'silently "improved" it.'

It's really not as if these quotes were part of longer passages about a specific first lady, so that you could read something about her into the choice of words.

>12 gilroy: Stripes, but not too wide or garish. Maybe a very understated foulard, but that might be pushing things a bit.

>15 MarthaJeanne: It's a rare publisher that has decent editors on staff anymore. Too expensive.

Puzzling headlines department:

Most Want to See Clinton, Trump Tax Returns, Medical Records

Sadly, the Trump Tax doesn't seem to have returned after all, or at least if it has, the press are no longer interested.

But I've been out and about with a friend who owns a car, and thus spent some time reading what it says on the backs of Dutch trucks, something I don't often get to do. Lots of fatuously corporate taglines to observe, many of them in English. My favourite was a truck from a horticultural firm claiming "Excellence in mushrooms" - finally we have evidence that marketing is no different from horse-manure...

Re misuse of 'me': I came upon a deliberate instance of it just last night in a poem that wouldn't have been nearly so affecting had 'I' been used: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/48398.

'A compulsive read', 'compulsive reading' is something else I've come across lately, once again. No no no no.

' Its a rare publisher that has descent editors on staff anymore.' FTFY, PhaedraB.

>24 bluepiano: Good one!

>24 bluepiano: Editing floor... going down!

My regional news channel just did a story about an outbreak of a food-born illness. The graphic read: Hepatitus A.

I am failing to resist the urge to say, Andronicus?

Food-born illness? Is this an example of US distaste for extraneous lettters, like 'e', on words?

Does the food give birth to the illness or carry it?

>28 maizie2004: Busted!

>28 maizie2004: That's why so many people are afraid of GMOs.

President Obama Grants Grateful Dead Fan Clemency From Life Imprisonment

Sometimes the American habit of capitalising every word in a headline creates interesting misreadings. But a penal system that punishes errors of musical taste so harshly obviously has something going for it.

So he wasn't grateful, dead nor an Obama fan?

And her name was not Clemency?

>33 darrow: Just be thankful we're not in the 1870s any more.

Last night I watched the mayor of a city which shall be left unnamed present the key to the city to someone "as a token of your esteem."

PhaedraB, was that a slip of the tongue or is 'esteem' being used in that way over there?

In your gratitude for any reply.

>36 bluepiano: From the context, it sounded like the mayor was saying the awardee got the key because of their inherent "esteem" rather than as a token of the esteem the municipality had for them. It didn't sound like a slip of the tongue so much as a misunderstanding of the direction in which esteem should flow.

Ah then, it occurs to me that one politician will sometimes refer to another as an 'esteemed colleague' & I wonder might that be a reason for his/her confusion . . . ? ('He's a great talent for playing the piano' > 'He's musically talented' but in reverse, if you get.)

I think in fact 'talented' was one of the words Bierce railed against in his usage book & your post no doubt has his dust spinning & crying in the wind 'I *told* you it would come to this'.

>35 PhaedraB: Alternative interpretation: the mayor was speaking English with a Spanish accent and the awardee is the proprietor of a sauna patronised by the municipal élite...